


Warmth and Decay

by SilentWaves



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Cuddling in an IKEA Store Hell Yeah, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, They're About Third-Year Age in This, Zombie Apocalypse, very brief mention of underage drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25835413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentWaves/pseuds/SilentWaves
Summary: If anyone had to be voted "Most Likely to Survive the Apocalypse", it would be Karma and Gakushuu.Unfortunately, being good enough to survive an apocalypse doesn't necessarily mean they're fit to survive the cold, especially if they can't risk creating any large heat sources.So, for the sake of survival, they huddle.
Relationships: Akabane Karma & Asano Gakushuu, Akabane Karma/Asano Gakushuu
Comments: 7
Kudos: 146





	Warmth and Decay

**Author's Note:**

> Back on my Karushuu bullshit… whoops.

It’s cold inside. It always seems to be cold, now that winter’s officially begun. 

They had hoped, albeit optimistically, that the chill over the whole of Japan would be enough to slow down the zombies. Unfortunately, they don’t move as slowly as they do in movies and books. It probably has something to do with the antimatter that’s taken over their bodies.

Karma shivers. He seems to always be shivering these past few weeks. 

The winters never seemed this bad before, but that was when he was well equipped to fight against them with a reliable furnace and wooly coats that didn’t have an abundance of rips and tears. Nearly all of their clothes now were becoming ragged, but Karma isn’t about to throw away their only defense against rotting teeth and unhinged jaws. 

And there was no shortage of clothes, sure, but the apocalypse had started in the beginning of May and tank tops didn’t do anything against the cold. Turns out, people really don’t hold on to their winter clothes after the season’s over, and their many failed raids could attest to that. Luckily, sheets are an all-time thing, but layers upon layers of thin summer blankets meant less mobility. At least Karma has regained feeling in his toes.

“Ikea really does have everything, huh?” Gakushuu calls from across the aisle. Neither of them are particularly experienced with building furniture, because even with the clear cut instructions their fingers refused to cooperate with the tiny nails and precision tools at these temperatures. 

They barricaded the main entrances long ago, doing so while covered in rotting zombie flesh to mask their scents and with the chill of winter sapping away their heat as they made their way into shelter. Nobody else had made it with them, and neither Karma nor Gakushuu could spare the heart to wait as everyone else struggled to keep up with their pace. Karma decided to pick up soccer during high school mainly to spite Gakushuu into more competition, but he’s glad that they both stayed in shape these past three years.

“Yeah, thank fuck.” Karma’s reply is muffled by the layers of comforters that he’s piled on top of his head. The frost on his nose is biting. “Did they go far enough for us to make a fire yet?” 

Every door was blocked and sealed with the strongest pieces of furniture they could build before their bodies gave out on them, but there was nothing they could do about the windows or the skylights. Glass breaks too easily. 

So in their corner, on the ground floor of an Ikea store with the best vantage point that they could get without cutting off their escape routes, surrounded by food cans that neither of them are willing to touch, they stay still so as to not risk attracting zombies to their location. Zombies could track smells, heat, sound, and no amount of hastily-constructed furniture would make them feel comfortable enough to set up a heat source where one shouldn’t exist. They especially won’t do it when their joints are stiff and their muscles were the most unresponsive they’ve ever been. 

“That’d be amazing if they did,” Gakushuu sighs. “While we’re at it, let’s just wish away the whole apocalypse altogether, why don’t we?” 

He doesn’t mean it, Karma knows. His insults lack his usual bite, the spark that made Gakushuu _Gakushuu_ , leaving only whatever’s left of him when he’s faced with an unsolvable question on a rigged test that determines whether he lives or dies. There’s no room for guesswork, no room to bullshit a last-minute answer. 

“Hmm,” Karma doesn’t have the strength to reply in kind. He enjoys their banter. Well, he enjoys their banter when they aren’t half-starved and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Their temporary shelter is inevitably going to be ruined by a zombie crashing through an entrance — Karma just hopes he would be too frozen by then to be much use when his body gets taken over. 

“How’s our food supply?” Gakushuu asks, but Karma knows that he already knows the answer. What else is there to do at a time like this? What else was there to consider when all they can feel is the rumbling of their stomachs and the chill on their skin? The blankets aren’t helping, because Karma can still feel his teeth chattering away. If he discovers that his bones have been grounded into a fine powder from the aggressive shivering, Karma doesn’t think he’ll be surprised. 

“Same as the last seven times you asked.” Karma mumbles, though his voice quivers from his shaking jaw. “Just enough for a week.”

They’re rationing, to the best of their ability, at least. That doesn’t change the fact that they’re nowhere near fast enough to run to an old supermarket and stuff all the canned food they can carry without compromising their speed. They wouldn’t make it, and either they find out how edible the pizzas from Ikea’s long-broken freezers are, which, well, it’s only been seven (nearly eight) months by now… how bad could they be?

Maybe they could throw them at the zombies when they come to attack. Karma snorts at the thought.

“What?” Gakushuu mumbles. He’s sitting next to Karma now, wrapped in just as many blankets and shivering just as much. They’re speaking quietly. So quietly that it feels like they’ve carved out a world just for themselves, populated only by their fogged breaths and whispered words. 

“Do you think zombies can get indigestion?” Karma smiles. It hurts his cheeks to do so, with how dry and numb they are. 

“If only,” Gakushuu huffs, the only sign of laughter from his end. They don’t have the energy to make a motion larger than that.

Karma misses the summer. 

He didn’t realize he would ever think such a thing, what with all the time off from boring-ass school with his boring-ass teachers and sure, he supposes his classmates now aren’t _all_ bad, especially the last three years where he’d gotten to see Gakushuu on a daily basis. And sure, Karma finally managed to get Gakushuu’s number in second year (though he does admit that Operation GPCPN-A2 could’ve gone a lot smoother than it did) so he still got to have regular conversations with him. And sure, they met up for a “friendly” soccer game and post-game ice cream trips more often than not. And sure, _maybe_ those summers with Gakushuu were already some of the best goddamn moments in Karma’s life, _so what?_ Back then, Karma wasn’t depending on the weather to stay alive. 

_Koro-sensei would probably have a solution to this._ Karma thinks. 

Well, it was Koro-sensei’s fault to begin with. Sort of. Not really — it was more so the scientists who took over the antimatter project and messed with shit they weren’t qualified to mess with, and now here they were, surrounded by decayed bodies and the damn tentacle parasites controlling them. 

People die within minutes of being taken over; human bodies just aren’t made to handle the raw force of the tentacles after they’ve evolved like this. They look enough like zombies, and when it’s a fucking lab-grown antimatter tentacle controlling someone’s brain they act well enough like them too. They start decaying right after they get bitten and controlled, so before the muscles dissolve completely the tentacles had to find yet another host to kill. And so it continues. 

They’re all going to rot soon enough, Karma knows. He _knows_ this, and so does Gakushuu, but they’ve thankfully never been low on water so he can’t forget the few times that they’ve caught each other shedding a tear or two at the sheer hopelessness of the situation. They, even more thankfully, never said a single word about it to each other. Now, the tears froze before they could even leave their eyes.

“I miss summer,” Gakushuu says, expressing the same sentiment that’s bouncing around Karma’s own mind. He says it so quietly thought, even at their already-lowered volume that Karma can almost believe that he imagined it altogether.

“Me too,” Karma replies. He shifts the blankets further over his head and tucks his ears between his arms, hoping that his breath, barely any warmer than the air outside of his blankets, might be able to remove the sharp cold from the tips of his ears. He faintly hears shuffling to his left, where Gakushuu is sitting. 

“Dumbass evolution. Humans aren’t built for winters,” Gakushuu grumbles, closer now that he’s shifted towards Karma’s spot.

“Mmhm,” Karma manages. He really does miss summer. Not only for its heat and sun, but also because they were doing just fine for themselves, what with Karma’s former assassin training and Gakushuu’s martial arts proficiency. They had even gotten a little too cocky about their abilities to take down the tentacled creatures, even with the speed and power at which they operated. 

That all changed once winter struck. 

Gakushuu, the control freak that he is, refused to ever be low on food and water, so they always carried enough for half a month. That was about the only good thing to happen to them the past half-year, since their slightly shaky fingers from the autumn chill turned into numb and disobedient ones as soon as the first snow came.

Speaking of.

“Hey, you know what day it is?” Karma asks.

“December 25,” Gakushuu sighs. “Sorry, happy birthday.”

Karma lets out a pleased hum. “For my present, I’d like all the zombies to disappear.”

Gakushuu huffs again. Karma tries to crack a smile at his response, but his lips are too numb to move.

“There’s also a heavy snowfall tonight. Don’t know how long it’ll last.” Gakushuu went scouting earlier, climbing onto the roof through the skylights. Karma dreads his turn tomorrow, but nobody _enjoys_ throwing themselves in life-threatening danger in the middle of winter. Well, he did, but only if the winter part was removed from that whole equation. Gakushuu continues, “I think we can try to go for more food at noon tomorrow or the day after.”

“Mmhm, does that mean I’m getting more pillows?” Karma asks. Serving as both a thick defense against the cold as well as the zombies’ sharp teeth, pillows have been a surprisingly useful commodity during this season now that their clothes have become more rip than cloth. And besides, they can’t exactly lug thirty pounds of blankets each to a fight. Karma absolutely refuses to die to a zombie dogpile. 

Hell, he refuses to die at all. Sure, his limbs were about two degrees from freezing right off, and he might end up starving for another month or so, but if he can still spot the determined glint in Gakushuu’s eyes after all this time, well, Karma sure as hell isn’t going to lose. 

If it really comes down to it, if he really has to face down another goddamn zombie in the middle of winter when he can’t even move his goddamn body, he’s still not going to blink first. 

Karma is absolutely _not_ a coward. 

“Gakushuu?” Karma says, and his voice comes out shakier than expected, but it does feel like goddamn Antarctica even in the comfort of his blankets, so it’s not his fault. Really. “C’mere.”

“Mmhm?” Gakushuu looks at him, confused. He does eventually move over once Karma gestures a little more energetically. 

“We could at least share whatever five joules of heat we have between the two of us.” Karma says by way of explanation as Gakushuu piles his blankets on top of Karma’s and shuffles to his side. 

Karma’s reminded of those blanket forts that he’d attempt when he was younger. He was a troublemaker back then, sure, yet no parent could keep their 8-year-old children from running up to the big mansion at the end of their street, especially since along with it came the promise of no parental supervision.

So there were a lot of opportunities to build blanket forts, and he had the goons to do it with. They were a lot more stable, and noticeably more sweaty, not to mention the fact that the person pressed to his side is currently a someone whose hair is covered in snow and smells like dull Ikea soap paste and also just happens to be a someone whom Karma’s more than halfway in love with.

Gakushuu suddenly shifts closer. He wraps an arm awkwardly around Karma’s side. “This alright?” He mutters. Karma is very acutely aware of Gakushuu’s soft breath ghosting over his shoulder.

Karma’s affirming hum is only slightly strangled. He opts to nod instead, taking the chance to turn towards his companion. 

“It’s nice,” Gakushuu says, after a few breaths. Karma desperately hopes that he can’t hear the acceleration of Karma’s heartbeat. With the temperature what is currently is, he would’ve really have liked his body to supply him with more blood flow a lot sooner. 

“Yeah,” Karma sighs. 

With every passing minute, each feeling like an hour, Karma allows himself to be a bit more bold. A foot an inch to the left. The tip of his thumb brushing over bruised knuckles and calloused palms. A whisper of a breath meeting fog at halfway. His eyes flicker — down, back up, down again. 

Before long, he’s only vaguely aware of the flush in his face and the clamminess of his palms, because they’ve gotten close enough that he can count the few freckles Gakushuu got on his face from all the time they’ve spent in the sun. He could count his eyelashes, but doesn’t because it would ruin the illusion of infinity. 

“Karma,” Gakushuu says suddenly. He’s speaking with more energy in his voice. _Good, at least that means his throat finally thawed out a bit,_ Karma thinks.

“Yeah?” Karma grins, wide and warm. “Usually it’s the other way around, isn’t it? Me pestering you?”

“Oh shut up,” Gakushuu huffs, his breath warm for the first time this month. “I just wanted to say that we should keep doing this. The heat is localized, the zombies won’t be able to detect us unless they’re already inside the storage room.”

“Obviously, that’s why I’m the genius between the two of us.” Karma’s lifts his chin, feeling full mobility back in his neck now that it’s not too busy shivering. He’s missed this too, the banter, the lighthearted jabs, the competitive light that sparks in Gakushuu’s eyes. The summer when the attacks first began, Karma was completely spoiled. There were so many fistbumps, so many wide grins and bubbling retorts, Karma didn’t realize how temporary it all was until he saw the fire of Gakushuu’s soul relight just now. 

They go back and forth a bit, their argument barely any more intellectual than the _no you’re not_ , _yes I am_ that would be expected from children a quarter their age. 

And before he knows it, Karma is _laughing_. A second later, Gakushuu joins in.

It then occurs to them that this, the full-bodied, energetic laugh that pumps adrenaline through their veins and fuels the fire that they’ve made in their little blanket fort, is wrapped up just between the two of them. 

Gakushuu’s hair is dripping slightly, either from the melting snow or a light sheen of sweat, Karma can’t tell. And he can’t bring himself to care, because _wow_ , was it always this easy to move his fingers? He can practically feel the blood as it passes through his arteries, the exhilaration of feeling alive for the first time since the first snow fell. He grips tighter onto Gakushuu’s shirt. 

He supposes that maybe this can rank in the top three birthdays.

The first, obviously, being that year with Koro-sensei when he got taken on a trip around the world. The second would be during his second year of high school, when Gakushuu had begrudgingly accepted that yes, they were indeed friends, and proceeded to steal his dad’s credit card to rent out a whole yacht for just the six of them. Karma had never gotten so drunk in his entire life — on adrenaline, on joy, on drinks… most likely a combination of all three. 

So yes, he supposes his third can be huddling next to Gakushuu in the middle of a zombie apocalypse in a furniture store that he never visits. 

Karma’s definitely blushing at this point. How could he not, when he could almost taste the stale crackers on Gakushuu’s breath every time he speaks? When Gakushuu’s face is flushed with mirth from their earlier jovial argument and from the newfound heat that their proximity grants? When Gakushuu’s made himself comfortable in the crook of Karma’s neck, hair tantalizingly close?

Well, his hair probably isn’t as soft as it used to be. The fine strands are washed regularly, partially out of fear of disease, but mostly because because Gakushuu can’t handle dirt when he’s out of his soccer uniform. Unsurprisingly, shampoo and conditioner became a lot less of a priority in the middle of an apocalypse, so it’s not exactly suitable for running one’s hands through at the moment.

Karma wants to anyways.

As if he’s just now noticing their current proximity, Gakushuu’s ears flush with a red that’s too sudden to be an effect of their near-snuggling position. Karma almost wants to respond with his signature smirk and a teasing comment, that is, if he isn’t so sure that his face is probably mirroring Gakushuu’s own. 

Gakushuu’s lips part, and close against quickly, the action unnoticeable to anyone not paying attention. Karma finds his eyes sliding to meet the movement, and resting there. 

He’s never had difficulty with eye contact, especially when people respond to his unwavering critical gaze with a fumbling stutter and a subsequent need to leave for some excuse or another. The only incidents where Karma breaks eye contact with Gakushuu are when the latter fails to cover up a laugh or when the former fails to pretend that he hasn’t been staring. 

So here he was, with Gakushuu’s chin resting on his shoulder, arms now wrapped securely around his torso, eyes looking up to search for Karma’s own… Karma’s ashamed to admit that his infallible reputation for never getting flustered is taking quite the hit right now.

Gakushuu’s mouth opens again, and they’re close enough that Karma can hear the hitch in his breath. Karma can practically hear the gears turning in his friend’s head. 

“I didn’t know you were the type of person to hesitate,” Karma teases. 

“Shut up, I’m not,” Gakushuu stumbles through a retort, Karma’s comment clearly throwing him off from the rehearsed speech that’s formulating. “I just figured, since we’re already here, I don’t want you to think I’m —” He pauses, his mouth twisting with thought. Karma already misses the smile that it replaced. 

“— taking advantage.” Gakushuu finishes, his statement punctuated with his arms tensing behind Karma’s back.

Karma raises an eyebrow. They came out to each other over a year ago, if that’s his concern. Besides, Karma’s not an idiot — he knows how compromising their situation would be if it hadn’t been for the sake of survival. “You’re not…” He makes a vague hand gesture, both too tangled up in their mess of limbs to move any more, and also unsure of how to phrase it. 

“That’s not it,” Gakushuu bites his lip, the same shade as his face, and Karma barely registers his next words. “I was looking for… well, I don’t know what I was looking for. Maybe some monumental time in our lives. The plan was during graduation. But that hardly matters _now_ , does it?”

Karma blinks. He must be misinterpreting, surely. The heat, or the cold — maybe a combination of both — fried his award-winning brain. Because if this is what he thinks it is…

Gakushuu continues rambling, “And fuck, like, what was I even _thinking_ , having these feelings for someone like you, but one can only be in denial for so long before it turns into idiocy, you know? And—” he clamps his mouth shut with an audible click. “I didn’t mention that I’m more or less in love with you, didn’t I?”

Karma shakes his head no. He stares dumbly for a second before opening his mouth again. “Does it matter?” He watches Gakushuu’s gaze turn questioning, then softens as he leans in. Karma closes the distance, and the warmth of Gakushuu’s lips are somehow even more welcoming than their shared body heat. 

They stop talking after that. After all, they’re the ones always preaching the idea that actions speak louder than words ever could. Study hard, and the resulting grades will speak for themselves. Kiss like their lives depended on it, and their feelings couldn’t be clearer than a warm summer’s day. 

Karma is only slightly ashamed to admit that he’s absolutely blanking out in the best way possible.

At some point, Gakushuu’s arms moved from Karma’s torso to his neck, fingers lightly brushing against the strands of hair resting there. Neither of them had properly brushed their teeth in months, only having the luxury to chew on toothpaste for as long as they could stand it. Their skin smelled nowhere near the level of soft cologne and brand-name soaps, since anything that could clean off the blood and dirt stains was good enough for them to hastily grab. This was possibly the furthest thing from the fantasies Karma has thought up the past few years, yet it’s simultaneously better than all of them combined.

He’s out of breath, not because it’s cold or because they’re on the run, or not even because they’re in the middle of a fight. _This,_ Karma thinks, might be the best kind of breathless.

They’re almost _too warm_ now, but Karma would never even think of complaining. This heat was welcome, a very welcome addition to the little world between the two of them.

And they’re embracing, and they’re kissing again, and there’s saliva coating their lips and sliding in droplets down their chins, and they lean in again, wanting more.

_Screw the apocalypse,_ Karma means to say only in the confines of his mind, but he might have whispered it where their tongues met. 

Gakushuu laughs, tinkly and breathless and warm and _beautiful_ , “Yeah, we deserve something nice after all the bullshit those zombies put us through.”

“Kissing you’s worth it.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a nasty sap.” But Gakushuu laughs again anyways. 

Karma loves that laugh. He liked it in school — the hesitant huff that escaped whenever Karma’s pranks went right, the cocky near-snort whenever he ranked number 1 on the major tests, the barely-coated distress whenever he mentions his family.

He _loves_ it now, when he can experience Gakushuu’s laugh with all five senses. Karma never thought he could feel attracted to canned-food-and-stale-cracker breath, or to hair still dripping from melting snow, or to the faint scent of completely plain soap. 

And yet, here he is.

They’re breathless, panting, yet they refuse to separate. With them, it’s always a competition of some sort, always pushing each other to their limits, always finding a way to make it enjoyable all the while. 

It’s a simple contact, small enough that it should barely register, yet they’re created their own personal furnace with their laughs, their lips, their soft gazes. 

And the world fades, because what significance does the snowstorm hold against the heat of their hearts? What does it matter that they have a dwindling supply of food when they’ve got each others’ energies to feed off of? How important is the zombie apocalypse outside when they’ve built themselves a fortress for just two people?

None of that matters at all, not when they feel so safe in each other’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> dw guys now that this idea has finally left me alone I can maybe finally move on from this ship… I love these boys a lot _but_ I’ve already declared my independence from assclass why is it not leaving my brain alone (speaking of… I may or may not have participated in an assclass event and am about to publish a 10k gen fic about 3-E soon 👀)
> 
> [Tumblr](https://voicelesswaves.tumblr.com/)


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